Friday, 26 November 2010

First steps in Salami

We're using a Weschenfelder salami pack for the curing and seasoning, as it's our first time. Once we know what we're doing, we'll be able to experiment with other ingredients.

We found we had to order the hard back fat, as it wasn't a commonly requested item. In the end, we we went to the lovely Maceys in Cookham Dean. We had no idea how much meat we needed to make a salami, the recipes supplied give proportions rather than absolutes. In the end, we ordered a whole load of stuff so that we could make sausages as well. For the salami, we used 2kg shoulder, 1kg hard back fat, and 1.5Kg of lean beef. We'll find out later whether that was enough, too little, or too much.

These are the instructions we're following for the making up of the salami:Step 1: the culture was made up with lukewarm water, at the rate of 0.6g per kilo of meat. This was allowed to settle for 20-30 minutes.Step 2: The meat was cut up and put in the fridge to chill. The hard back fat was cut up and put into the freezer (makes it easier to mince when chilled). Seasoning was weighed out, at the rate of 15g per kilo of meat.Step 3: soak the casings(ewww!)

Step 4: The meat was seasoned, and then minced using a coarse blade

.Step 5: The fat, culture, and pickling salt (28g per kilo) was added; everything well mixed.....

Step 7: stuff the mixture into the casingsWe had a minor problem here as our largest horn didn't fit the machine. We went to the next horn down though, and that still produced excellent results.

To our surprise, we used up all 3m of casing, and still had a small amount of meat left. Because it had culture and cure added, we couldn't do anything much with it...so we used some normal collagen sausage casings. No idea what it will turn out like, but we'll see.

We then hung the salamis over our kitchen counter, with a tray underneath to catch the drips. They have to stay like this for 24-36 hours so the fermenting can kick start, then we'll move them.

We ran out of butchers twine and resorted to sterilised string. Several of the sausages fell off its hook onto the tray and had to be re-tied. Next time we need to remember to leave more casing at the ends to allow a better tie.

Washed up everything, and then started again making normal sausages this time!